Warin & Ilareva, ‘Vulnerability in the New Pact: an empty promise to protect, or an operational concept?’, 2024

Catherine Warin & Valeria Ilareva, ‘Vulnerability in the New Pact: an empty promise to protect, or an operational concept?’, EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy, 2024

Abstract

In this blog, first, we recall briefly the pre-existing applications of vulnerability in European asylum law, and next we look at how the New Pact addresses individual factors of vulnerability and the diversity of those factors. We then highlight, focusing on the example of gender, the contextual dimension of vulnerability, which the New Pact acknowledges to a certain extent. We conclude that the New Pact allows for a much-needed approach of vulnerability as both individual and contextual, i.e. an approach which identifies certain individual characteristics and certain contexts (or situations) in which those characteristics become factors of vulnerability. This is essential if we want the human rights of those concerned to be effectively protected.